


More Like Espress-no (AKA The Cockblocked Coffee Adventures)

by kaotiskplatonisk



Series: Tony Stark Is the Main Source of Income to Starbucks (And Everyone Knows It) [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: #coulsonlives, A Metric Ton of Coffee, And Not Even the Life Model Decoy, At One Point There's Some Bilgesnipe, Bots Being Ridiculous, Coffee Addict Tony Stark, Earth's Mightiest Dorks, Everyone's Ridiculous, Humor, M/M, Tony Being Ridiculous, Tony Stark Is Just One Big SNAFU, so much coffee, the real deal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-25
Updated: 2015-02-25
Packaged: 2018-03-15 06:07:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3436304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaotiskplatonisk/pseuds/kaotiskplatonisk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The team doesn’t truly understand the scope of Tony’s coffee dependency until he shoves it in their faces.</p><p>(In other words, Tony gets a bitchfit of coffee all the time, but it always goes a bit crooked; have some examples)</p>
            </blockquote>





	More Like Espress-no (AKA The Cockblocked Coffee Adventures)

**Author's Note:**

> Hej!  
> I have basically superimposed my undying coffee-lust over Tony Stark, and then written copious amounts of random to go with it. So. Any questions?  
> Muse-ic is Blood Pressure by Mutemath  
> Tak!

The team doesn’t truly understand the scope of Tony’s coffee dependency until he shoves it in their faces.

As with most snafus revolving around Tony Stark, he waits until they reach critical mass before he thinks to involve his team. Steve’s gone over the whole ‘there’s no I in team’ speech with him a dozen times, but his response is always somewhere along the lines of ‘no, but there is a me’. Bruce picks up on the impending train wreck weeks beforehand, because Tony’s crashes are always almost painfully gradual, and Bruce is the only one besides Thor who’s naive-cum-brave enough to question Tony’s glaring idiosyncrasies.

Tony’s sprawled out on the couch in usual unbecoming style, talking tech-savvy with JARVIS as he waits for his waffles to finish their sentence in the toaster. Steve wanders in from the lobby and his usual pre-dawn marathon (“Tony it’s just a run, I don’t even go that far”, "THIRTY EIGHT MILES”), striding into the adjoining kitchenette to tap at the Keurig.

“Hey, Oh Captain My Captain, that one’s getting its booster shots, go use the other one.” Tony calls from the common area without looking up, because he’s freaky good at knowing when people are messing with any form of technology within a thirty mile radius.

Bruce looks up from his bowl of Frosted Mini Wheats, propped up on the island tabletop by his elbows, at the same time Steve says, “booster shots?”

“Yeah, y’know, upgrades. System checks. Bean-to-water ratio, tweaks to the heating unit, I take my coffee seriously, Cap, no me gusta factory settings.”

“How many Keurigs do you have?” Bruce asks as Steve launches into decrypting the secondary Keurig hidden in the bread-box-style cabinet to his left. Tony’d redone the interface to this one, offering a morass of different water temperatures, heat-to-pressure ratio configurations, flavor infusions, and practically a book on different brewing options. Bruce watches him fiddle with a fond sort of amusement. Cap conquering the modern age was ridiculously funny to spectate.

Tony makes a noncommittal sound, toying with a holographic representation of what looked like a generic-brand paper shredder.

“Hn, like, five? I dunno. J, how many Keurigs we got?”

“Seven in the Tower, sir, three in the penthouse and accompanying personal quarters, and four in the workshop. There are also four electric French presses, eight espresso machines, and one miniaturized portable aero-press."

Steve and Bruce exchange a look, the kind that the team has sort of come to accept sharing with each other whenever Tony pulls this sort of thing.

Read: they share these looks a lot.

“Tony,” Steve says slowly, “Don’t you think that’s a little… much?”

Tony shoots him a glare from over the rims of his custom Barton Perreira sunglasses, lips thinned into a petulant line, as if Steve had just insulted his mother.

“Never too much coffee, Cap.”

And that's where things start to go crooked.

 

**15.**

There was a Starbucks on every street corner in the heart of Boston.

Also, bilgesnipe. Bilgesnipe on every street corner in the heart of Boston.

"Thor! Take Hawkeye and get to the high ground. We need visual on the pack, pick them off from on high." Steve hefts his shield higher on his forearm, bottlenecking the half-demolished intersection he and Natasha played goalie on. She was in the process of readjusting the voltage on her wrist-mounted Widow's Bites. The herd moving toward them had thick, non-conducting hides and a hive mentality. A few scattered factions had broken away from the main group and played wrecking ball with a chunk of Back Bay, but the Avengers had staged a coup on the scene and either turned the freakish deer-lizard-bear THINGS back or to ash.

"Aye." Mjölnir whirls at Thor's waist, a vortex of gunmetal grey until a backlog of static electricity crackles through the air and pops their ears, hoisting Clint up by the reinforced scruff of his uniform (it links to his kevlar vest, it's like a puppy harness, relax about it) and letting his momentum lever himself into the air.

"Coulson, where the hell is Stark?" Steve barks into his comm, using his Captain America voice, the one that freezes the blood of evil-does everywhere and just BLEEDS justice. Natasha covers his blind spots with a precision that is downright scary as the herd barrels down the avenue, taking stop signs and fire hydrants with them in their cloven-hooved wake. Steve braces his shield.

"ETA thirty seconds, Captain, can you hold the line?"

That's always the question when they're down a man (or, in Natasha's case, a woman) or two. They work better as a cohesive unit, all six cogs of a machine running fluidly together. As five, or four, three or even two, the job gets done and the days gets saved, but a full attendance is preferable. With Bruce holding the last line of defence at the Back Bay subway station entrance in non-green-rage-monster form (for now) and Stark God knows where, full attendance was looking really, really appealing.

"We're good here. We're good here, right?" Steve aims this last bit at Natasha, whose semi-automatic pistols are belting out a staccato tattoo and felling bilgesnipe left and right. Steve runs a quick set of angles and lines of trajectory through his mind before his torso is arching, body moving like a drawn bowstring and his arm snaps out. The shield ricochets off the first big-n-ugly's forehead with enough force to crush concrete, taking a second one in the chest before hitting the thin edge of a spared traffic sign and darting back to him.

"Sure. It's a party," Natasha says as Steve straightens up, a tiny curve to her lips as he does, "We can handle this."

The heart of the pack erupts into a fireball of extra-crispy interdimensional monstrosity as Hawkeye finds footing on his perch, picking the frontliners off to serve as makeshift trip wires for the next wave. Thunder tolls overhead in chorus with the sudden extra firepower.

Steve slings his shield, watching it redouble like a pinball between targets, dodging the stampede as it goes bowling past.

Their comms crackle to life and the first waning chords of The Raveonettes filters through the channel as the herd unleashes its fury on the next block of central Boston. Steve almost laughs, but then he remembers he's still pissed with this asshole.

"Traffic was brutal," Tony comments as he lands fist-down in front of the pack. Thor's manipulating the barometric pressure to send them into a frenzy, but if anything it panics them even more. For a moment it looks as though the gleaming form of the armor will be engulfed by the morass of writhing, clawing bodies.

"Tony, now's not the time for a game of chicken!"

"Keep your star-spangled shorts on, Cap, it's called dramatic flair."

The shoulder panels of the armor retract, a miniature army of flares singing to life and darting to catch the closest heat signature square in the face. Steve hears Clint mutter over the comm "was that a fucking pun", which seems like the right response to that maneuver.

Repulsors up, Tony picks off the larger targets easily as his flares find weaknesses in the eye sockets, concave collarbones, knees of the bilgesnipe with enthusiasm. With Natasha and Steve blocking their escape route back up the street and Tony standing vanguard for the next few yards of uninterrupted asphalt, and Thor and Clint keeping the flanks in order and taking potshots at the center of the formation, the ratio of bodies to targets began to teeter and then plunge down the slippery slope of no return.

"What, you stop to sign autographs on the way up?" Clint drawls over the comm.

"Hey, listen, unlike you lazy-ass mooches, some of us actually have DAY JOBS to go to to pay the rent."

"What rent?" Natasha chimes, with just the palest ghost of amusement tinting her voice.

"I'll have you know I'm a model white-collar stud, Romanov, and you're just jealous because I fired you from your shot at a non-lethal paper pushing career."

"I was crushed, those fake credentials took a while to put together." Natasha deadpans. Clint laughs.

Steve bashes his shield into the jaw of a redoubling bilgesnipe, flagging Tony with a gesture he knows they both understand all too well. It lasts a tenth of a second, but Tony's seen it, the arc reactor glowing viciously bright. Steve angles his shield and braces as the unibeam shreds the air between them, bouncing off the vibranium and socking the bilgesnipe in the chest. The smell of scorched flesh and a wailing, inhuman scream fills the air, then Steve readjusts the shield and the beam shears through the remaining handful of bilgesnipe.

"Ah, fuck," Tony mutters as he cuts the unibeam, the arc reactor pulsing in wild bursts of light. Natasha holsters one of her guns, chest narrowing every time she draws a labored breath, then goes about her usual routine of picking her way through the bilgesnipe graveyard, shooting the dubiously dead ones in the face.

Steve stalks over to Tony, ignoring Coulson's rapidfire dialogue in his ear.

"What the hell was that? Where were you, Stark?"

Tony flips his faceplate open.

"I had a thing at SI, Jesus Cap, I told you I'd be raining on your parade a little late."

"We were called to assemble twenty minutes ago. You said you'd be here in ten."

Tony verbally swerves, trying to get a royally pissed Captain America off his scent.

"These people drive like Evil Kneevil, I swear to God, no wonder they're called Massholes-"

"JARVIS," Steve tries in the voice he adopts when it's time to get the fuck outta his way, "Where did Tony go from the Tower?"

"What. No. Bad call, belay th-"

"Sir left the Tower on the predetermined flight plan, Captain, but was delayed by a detour at the Starbucks on Delano street."

"JARVIS, you snitching little fucker." Tony snarls. He really does not like the look Steve's giving him, especially with his shield still on his arm, no, that is a recipe for a goddamn gigantic grudge match.

"You stopped. For coffee?"

There were audible stops in Steve's voice, fragmented by his otherwordly levels of torque. Not good not good not good-

"Stark is so dead!" Clint crows safely from wherever the fuck the little shit is perched, "Hey, dead meat, you better have got me a frappachino."

"What makes you think he'd buy you coffee?" Natasha asks as she double checks the quality of deadness of a particular bilgesnipe with the barrel of her pistol.

"He's my coffee bitch. Hey Tony, I'd start running. Cap's doing that whole 'not gonna throw my shield not gonna throw my shield gonna throw my shield' routine."

Bruce frowns, a few miles away, as the familiar form of Iron Man rockets away from the scene like a bat out of hell.

 

 **32**.

As far as bad habits go, some people bite their nails, others nibble the ends of their pencils, and still others just don't put the seat down when they're done.

But Tony Stark? Tony Stark picks up new languages.

Being raised bilingual, constantly walking a line between Italian and English, he knows the dynamic. Having an IQ of 245 and change, he can deconstruct the framework of any language, any nuanced dialect, and spit it back at you with perfect fluency. Also, there was that stint in Afghanistan where learning Dari and Persian was sort of a 'do or die' ordeal, so.

Tony knows how to say 'where's the closest goddamn coffee shop' in over twenty different languages and that's really starting to annoy the fuck out of Clint.

Denmark is a fucking weird country, for one. Nice, but weird. Not exactly typical supervillain spawning ground, either, but hey, the Avengers are on the scene, so it's apparently a thing.

And Tony just will not shut up.

Clint adjusts his angle, tapping his fingers in a easy, slow rhythm against the curve of his bow from on high, watching Tony turn his coffee cup back and forth in his palm.

"Not the time for a macchiato, Tony." He says into his comm, eyes sweeping over the street below. He hated when supervillains decided that 'hey, making my big fiery debut of death will be great in the middle of a heavily-populated city!' and not just saved themselves the trouble and staged their little stunts in some nice, secluded desert. Would make his job a helluva lot easier.

"Okay one, not a macchiato, did you leave your aids at home again? Say it with me, cap-a-chi-no. Also, it is always time for coffee. Always. Do not question the sanctity of the coffee, Barton, I will choose this cup over you in a firefight any day." Tony easily slides into lilting Danish as he thanks the barista, reaching across the tabletop for his second cup. He stays close to the window, always within Clint's field of vision, because he knows Clint, knows it makes him nervous and stressed when he doesn't have a clear line of sight of the people on his team.

"You see her in that dinky café of yours?"

"I resent that, I'm hurt, this is not dinky. Where Steve shops for clothes? Dinky. Where I buy liquid nirvana? Not fuckin' dinky. Difference. Know it."

"I got eyes." Clint's saying the words on instinct, a decision made by his eyes and mouth that doesn't consult the rest of him, like recoiling from scalding heat. But they're true, sudden and unyielding in their honesty and it leaves Clint locking his jaw and knocking an arrow.

Her sunny blonde hair matches her Juvie snapshot exactly, loose ringlets of gold that frames her shoulders. She's definitely not making an attempt at subtlety, too confident, too arrogant, or too ignorant to bother. Her sweetheart neckline is attracting attention outside of Clint's hypervigilance.

Tony doesn't respond to him, issuing a charming "tak" [thank you] to the barista and strolling out, barely making the stoplight in his leisurely pace as he crosses the crosswalk. Hawkeye keeps his bowstring drawn tight between the two fingers steadying the aft of the arrow, cold metal against his cheek and no one to see him make the shot. Humans have one general rule: they don't look up.

Clint frowns as Tony slips between people and then-

Clint's fingers tense, the muscles in his shoulder and upper arm going loose and fluid as Tony walks right into their target. Coffee goes everywhere in a firework of beige.

"Ah! Jegbeklager!" [Sorry!] Tony says, and even in a different language Clint knows that's his public voice, the one he uses to deflect and lie.

Nobody talks to each other in public in Denmark unless they're in the same group. So drenching a complete stranger in frothy frou-frou coffee product isn't really conventional.

She handles it like a champ, though, the flamboyant shell pink of her lips thinning into a pale line. Clint smiles, the firm weight of his bow brushing the corner of his mouth.

Tony rattles off a string of apologetic Danish, equipped with stutters in all the right places, all the while edging out of the path of Clint's arrow.

She goes still very suddenly, shaking her hands to rid them of dripping dregs of cappuccino and looks up at Tony under thick carbon black eyelashes. The line of Tony's spine stiffens, he moves directly between the arrowhead and her, in a motion too assured to be accidental, and then Clint hears her through the comm say "jeger nødt til at gå".

'I have to go'.

"Wait," Tony murmurs to Clint as she stumbles by him, her gait thrown from what was an easy lope on impressive heels.

"I can take her, Tony," Clint warns him, voice feather-light and low as he relaxes, poised to let the arrow fly with the melting tension in his body. There's a flash-flood of pedestrians between her and the arrowhead, but he can make the shot, he has the line of sight.

"That wasn't right." Tony says, using his engineer voice, the one that says 'something's not running properly'.

"What, you want a do-over? This isn't Groundhog Day, Tony. Make the call."

"Sonofabitch." Tony hisses, darting after the girl. She's moving fast, keeping to the outer edge of the sidewalk now, but she openly passes a pair of policemen and moves right by them, the rise and fall of her shoulders all wrong, too tense, too fast. Clint watches her, tip of his arrow charting her movement like a penstroke over paper.

"Frøken! Undskyld, et øjeblik, frøken?" [Miss! Excuse me, hold on, miss?]

Her breathing is off-kilter, something that from living with Bruce Banner the mother of all tantrum-pitchers has them both on edge. She pretends not to hear him and walks faster.

"Et øjeblik." [Hold on.]

"Tony," Clint warns through his teeth.

"I know. Frøken?" [Miss?]

She finally acknowledges him, keeps him at arm's length with her body half-tilted away, as if she may try and run gain. Even from his perch Clint can see her eyes dart to the policemen. Not looking to get away. Beseeching them to look over at her.

Not right. Not right at all.

Tony asks if she's okay, apologizes again, but his hands are out where she can see them.

"Vær venlig, virkelig," [Please, really] She says.

Tony takes a step forward, extends a hand, but too late realizes his mistake and in the moment before she goes from pedestrian to howling wind demon he spins on a heel and pegs one of the police officers at the curb in the head with his remaining coffee.

Clint smiles, and then the arrow finds its mark, sinking into her thigh. Her veins are glowing coals against her skin and the air temperature's risen by leaps and bounds, but she falls to the concrete like any other regular human.

The police are on her in seconds, which would've been a cute but feeble gesture if Clint's arrowhead hadn't pumped her so full of sedative she wouldn't regain consciousness for at least two days. People are staring, but Tony says something in clipped Danish and the policemen nod once, one taking out his radio as the other checks her pulse, and a few look away. Tony nods at the assisting boys in blue, giving a jaunty little salute, and melds back into the foot traffic seamlessly. Clint whistles.

"SHIELD flunkies'll be with her when she comes to," Tony says into his comm, "The police know she's a mutant, they'll handle the rest. You okay up there, trigger-happy?"

"Trigger-happy! She went full-tilt venti on you, man."

"Since when do you know anything about Roman wind monsters and please stop saying venti, I'm already craving more coffee. I am so not thinking of that girl as a giant latte monster."

"There's a Starbucks a block down."

"There is a God."

Clint slings his bow over his shoulder, easing out of his crouch. On the ground the police are lifting the girl up as ambulance sirens wail down the street.

"So," Clint says, trying on casual for size, "You wanna tell me why you let her go?"

"Want to? 'Want to' is pretty strong wording, Hawk old buddy old pal."

"Tony."

"You're such a pain in the ass. I was giving you clear line of sight, but then she just… I don't know. She looked scared. Supervillains don't usually look scared before they go on a murdering spree, I dunno, might just be me. Supervillains ever look scared before committing morally abhorrent shenanigans to you?"

"Morally abhorrent shenanigans? Nope."

"Figured. She's got, what, three years Juvie and a couple of trips in and out of the nuthouse for panic attacks under her belt?"

"Something like that. It's not a nuthouse, Stark, it's a mental hospital."

"It's something outta Girl, Interrupted 'n you fucking know it, Barton."

Clint watches the paramedics jostle her into the back of the ambulance, but not enough people stop and watch to draw serious spectacle. That should be comforting, a good thing, but instead it's just sort of… sad.

"Her whole raging thermoelectric demon routine probably triggers when she panics. Defense-mechanism. Kick-started when I spilled coffee on her in broad daylight."

"Smooth, by the way. Her breathing was off. She walked fast, but not like she had any place to be. Angle of her shoulders was inward, like she was trying to shield herself."

"Ding-ding, we have a winner. So. Let's do a head-count. Crazy mutant lady turns out to be scared kid with anxiety issues and a healthy although slightly terrifying similarity to Bruce, two coffees have been wasted, the day saved and the city of however-the-fuck-you-

pronounce-it goes unscathed. Not bad for a kickass celebutante and his sidekick, hm?"

"You call me sidekick again, I put an arrow through your jugular. I wanna java chip frappachino. No skimping on me this time, Stark."

"Evil little archer. Evil."

 

 **147**.

Tony, being the textbook definition of 'high-end' in every conceivable intimation of the word, is naturally a coffee connoisseur and elitist.

No one is surprised by this.

The fact that he chooses Steve of all people to suffer his griping and groaning and subsequent coffee-tastings is slightly more surprising.

"Aw, come on, he's easy to impress." Tony leers at Natasha when she brings it up, all saccharine smile and barbed wire glare.

Providence was the worst, because apparently Providence was a quality coffee hothouse. Whenever Tony had a stint for SI to be bodily dragged into attending there he brought back a veritable tub of honey lattes and mochas and at least three new bottles of coffee syrup from Dave's. And if he passes a little mason jar of the matcha powder Natasha likes so much to her as he brushes past, well, then, who's to judge?

Chicago is much the same, and San Fransisco, and Cambridge. Tony makes special trips to the best and only the best coffee shops, which Clint is convinced he finds by way of communicating with his fellow coffee-junkies via howling at the full moon. Coulson allows the rumor to perpetuate only because Clint filches him a few bottles of the vanilla coffee syrup Tony brings home every now and again, and, let's be serious here, it's Dave’s.

But when in New York, Tony does as the New Yorkers do. And in the process he invites Steve to tag along. Tony gets an addictive thrill by trying and usually failing to guess which technological break-through will floor Steve next, and getting a quality roast out of the trip just makes it that much sweeter.

Steve isn't fazed by rockets or F-22s, not railguns or UAVs. He fought high-tech Nazi's, for God's sake, flew a plane that was decades ahead of its time into the Arctic, got injected with hypersteroids and then put into a metal tube the likes of which still cannot be replicated today. Steve's got a pretty good handle on technology, and it's hilarious to see people's faces when their assumptions are spat in that face at because yes, Captain America can actually figure out the dynamics of a Prezi.

But, full disclosure, his mind is still sort of blown/melted by Tumblr.

And Steve sort of likes this, becoming reacquainted with his city, his New York, after so long of it being taken away from him and dangled in front of him (cough cough that God-awful room at SHIELD he woke up in cough cough). Tony talks about coffee like Steve talks about his pencils and paints, explains to him the different cup sizes and why in the world someone would pay good money to drink anything the size of a demi. Tony takes him to a little hole-in-the-wall café he confesses to discovering on recommendation from Pepper, and it's a quaint little setup with bookshelves in the walls and a raised platform with couches and tables and chairs and faded hardwood. Tony gets them a pair of mochas, explains to Steve what a mocha is, and slips off his sunglasses for the first time since they left. Tony gestures with his hands when he talks, never seems able to keep them still, and somewhere in that instinct-driven reptilian hindbrain of Steve's he's wondering what would happen to those broad, sweeping motions if he took Tony's hands in his.

Then Tony asks him, "So, not a big fan?" and points to Steve's untouched cup, and the musings stutter to a halt. Steve looks down at the zarif he's been playing with absently and feels the tips of his ears go pink.

"Oh. No, I just- I'm not used to this kind of coffee."

Tony looks at him as if he'd just blasphemed, a little crease forming between his eyebrows.

"What, no coffee in the army?"

Steve laughs, "No, there was. But rationing was tight, and ours was black. Not… well, this. My mother drank it when I was growing up, but I could never stomach it. Too much acid. I'd trade my ration with some of the fellas in our unit for their M&M's."

Tony nearly choked on the long pull of mocha he was midway through. Steve smiles at him, a little pull at the corners of his lips he can't help not resisting.

"You traded… coffee, for chocolate?"

Steve hums, studying the mocha in his hand like a live grenade. Tony grins at him, wild and fierce and dazzling.

"I dunno whether I'm mortified or proud of you."

Steve blows the steam away from the top of his drink, eyeing its pale caramel coloring dubiously, then tentatively takes a sip. His eyes go wide like he's rediscovering Amazon, and that wolfish grin is back on Tony, and really it's a good look on him, and he catches himself deciding that no, this isn't half bad.

"This is good." Steve says, taking another, bolder draught.

After that Tony takes him to the Midtown East Gregory's (which he was convinced was better than the Midtown West one), playing tourist with Steve and standing close enough that their shoulders brush. That familiar anchor in a whirlpool of big and bright and new is something Steve didn't know he needed but couldn't imagine himself without. Tony points out major streets and where they lead, subway stops and their transit routes, naming buildings that Steve has to lean back to see the tops of with almost flippancy. At some point it dawns on him that he'd probably follow Tony anywhere, but he pushes that down in favor of reconfiguring his mental image of New York. They stop for glazed peanuts because that seems like the sort of ridiculously touristy thing that everyone should do at least once, and it strikes Tony with how easy this is, not Iron Man and Captain America navigating Midtown foot traffic, not even Tony Stark and Steve Rogers, just Tony and Steve, slowly building stable ground together in a pitching sea.

"Big leagues, Cap." He says, holding the door to Gregory's open. Steve is immediately in love with the smell of the place, the gritty fresh roast and earthy, bitter, almost burned quality of the espresso, the comforting sweet-savory of steamed milk.

Tony knows the barista, and between him and her they break down the general coffee experience for Steve. Tony explains the aero-press, the french press, the merits of espresso. He explains things with verve, in detail, to such a fine degree that Steve is immediately reminded of the armor, his sparkling enthusiasm when he talks about it.

"Perfect shot of espresso is twenty-one seconds," the barista tells him, carefully extracting the two half-filled shot cups from under their spouts, tilting them to let him see the familiar smooth black of the liquid. She makes them lattes, sweetened with a generous whorl of honey and powdered cinnamon on top. Tony lifts his glass in cheers and proclaims a dedication to the start of a "beautiful caffeine-high friendship".

Steve finds himself smiling like a giddy fool into the privacy of the rim of his cup and wonders when the last time he felt this at home was.

 

 **59.**

"Tony?"

"JARVIS, mute. Are you gonna stand there for a while or are you gonna come in?" Tony asks around the crowbar currently shoved between his teeth like a horse's bit. The last warbling strains of Beastie Boys drains into the background as Steve steps inside, closing the door behind him by hand although its hinges are designed to ease it shut automatically.

Tony pauses for a moment to eye his interloper before flicking his visor back down and straightening out on the little wheel-board, digging the crowbar deep into an elusive seam and wrenching on it.

Steve's lips quirk at the corners as he watched, the ripple and flex of Tony's arms underscored by the smudges of ebon oil and what was probably gunpowder that littered his skin. A streak of yellow like sulfur encircled his elbow. He set his host gift down on the workbench that looked like it had been the most recent victim of the natural phenomenon called the Tony-ado. He patted You hello, who was white-knuckling a fire extinguisher in his claw and hovering fretfully around Tony's supine form. Butterfingers and Dummy were busy trying to stack a diaspora of empty Starbucks cups into a pyramid against the back of the couch.

Steve sighed.

"How many of those are from today?"

"Uh, that would sort of depend on what day it is. JARVIS, what day is it?"

"Friday, sir, February twentieth."

"Oh, oh good, okay, at least we're still in the same week, here."

"Tony."

"Right. Hey, J, how many cups of coffee have I had today?"

"Eighteen, sir, not including the one Captain Rogers has most recently brought."

That got Tony's attention. Snapping his head around to find Steve, his begoggled eyes immediately found the iced triple espresso sitting pretty next to him.

"Oh, no, I think eighteen is enough, Tony. I think two is enough, two cups of coffee, but you ignored that suggestion."

"Sleep is for the weak. Caffeine makes sleep obsolete. Ergo, caffeine is the future." Tony sticks his tongue out at Steve, just to make his point. He rucks his goggles up into the tangled mess that is his hair, blinking into the halogen lights. Steve crosses his arms when Tony stumbles upright and gets ready to play interference. Again.

His life was so weird.

"But Steve I neeeed it."

"I will take this coffee and give it to Coulson, Tony."

"Who the hell taught you how to play dirty? Wait- no, I change my mind, I approve of this idea immensely."

Steve forces down a semi-exasperated smile and keeps his über-serious Captain America game face fixed. Tony spreads his arms wide, fashions his entire expression into pleading-wheedling-hopeful, and says, "I will trade you MOMA for that coffee, Steve. I will buy MOMA. I will do the thing."

Steve leans back against the workbench and sighs.

"'This is Tony Stark', they said," he says, "'he's brilliant and innovative and the greatest mind of our time.' they said."

"Of our time? Our time? No. I will accept of-all-time or of-all-of-time-and-space, an argument can be made for all-times-past-present-and-future. This is an insult to the levels of genius I operate at."

"He's also a real pain in my goddamn ass, but nobody thought to put that in the debrief."

"Steve! Language. I am actively creating a business plan to acquire MOMA, just so you know, it's happening, now release your hostages."

Steve gives Tony a long-suffering look of extraordinary levels of impatience and resignation.

"A real pain in my goddamn ass," Steve repeats, grabbing the sweating cup beside him and shoving it at Tony.

"It's a damn fine ass," Tony agrees, grinning in the manic way that usually means somewhere the tortured cries of Reed Richards can be heard bemoaning his scientific incompetence when compared to Tony motherfucking Stark.

Steve snatches the cup away before Tony's greedy fingers can reach it, holding it high over his head.

"I don't want MOMA," Steve says with a glint to his eyes that reveals his true superpower of being a devious tactical mastermind.

"Okay yes you can have the Smithsonian I can arrange that now gimme-"

Tony lunges and Steve moves, quick and lithe as he always is, a snap of his hips and Tony is crashing into the workbench's edge and Steve has him trapped there, coffee still above his head and therefore out of Tony's reach.

Tony turns blazing indignance on Steve, only to be sideswept when he realizes his position has become… compromised. And damn well compromising.

"I want," Steve leans in close, "a kiss."

"You are- Jesus Christ, that is the worst bargaining chip ever. I would've done that for a 'please' and maybe some puppy dog eyes, remind me to never to play poker with you I will wipe the floor with- mph." Tony's eyes drift shut as Steve- really, he deserves a saintdom for this- cuts off his babbling with his mouth on his.

His lips are sweet, warm, insinuating themselves between Tony's. His tongue just barely flickers over the edges of his mouth, the seam of his lips, tracing him like a map he has to memorize. Tony's hands ghost down his sides and over his hips and when they break apart Steve relents and lets his arm drop.

Tony practically squeals in delight, chewing on the straw as he conjures up schematics out of thin air to keep his fingers busy as Steve leads him to the couch and sits with him, brushing back and forth over the line of Tony's shoulder blades through his shirt and watching him work. They fall into each other so easily now, leaning against shoulders and chests and slinging their legs over the other's lap until it became second nature to seek each other's physical presence, the needle on a compass to guide them north.

A loud clatter from behind startles them both, and then Tony groans.

"Dummy, you pick those cups up right now or I swear to God I will-"


End file.
